A holiday ode to siblings

Our son is an only child — the product of one-and-done parents who didn’t want to be in their 50s with more than one teenager in the house.

Chris Kent

I didn’t have a brother, but I bet we would have looked like this.

But during the holidays I can’t help feel a bit sad that he won’t have a sibling to share Christmas morning memories when he’s older.

He won’t have the time his sister woke him up at 4 a.m. to declare Santa had been there and then be forced to suffer for two hours in the dark after getting yelled at by very, very angry, tired parents.

He won’t be able to blame her for the time she told him Santa wasn’t real and then proved it by dragging him into the garage where the slot car set of his dreams (the one that shows up from “Santa” on Christmas morning) is just barely visible in the loft.

And he won’t have a sister in the annual Christmas photos who wore matching pajama sets and identical festive jumpers, until they both hit puberty.

He absolutely won’t be able to thank her for the time when the dog choked and literally keeled over losing consciousness, and she gave mouth-to-mouth to fuzzy lips while he panicked and hid in the closet (an incident, by the way, that would have made up for the whole Santa-doesn’t-exist thing).

I suppose our son will have different holiday memories, ones that don’t include a sibling. And I guess he’ll have to save the dog himself.